This invention relates generally to manure spreaders and, more particularly, to manure spreaders for spreading chunks of hard-packed manure.
Many types of spreaders have been developed to utilize the fertilizer value of manure from farm animals such as dairy cattle or feeding cattle. The prior art manure spreaders include flail type spreaders with rotating aprons or movable gates. These types of spreaders are generally most commonly employed for use with non-liquid manures. Still other workers in the art have developed spray type spreaders which employ tanks, hoses and accessory equipment to effectively distribute liquid manures. Such liquid type manures usually must first be processed to add sufficient water to permit use with spray equipment. Both flail type spreaders and spray type spreaders have been generally and widely utilized in the past and both types are quite common. However, certain operating difficulties and inefficiencies have arisen with the presently available spreading equipment due to the nature of the manures available for distribution. For example, spreaders designed for solid application, such as the flail type spreader, cannot readily be employed for use with liquid manures. Also, because of the load characteristics inherent when spreading solid type manures, the prior art flail type spreader had to be ruggedly constructed and all parts had to be designed of increased strength to handle the solid manures. Despite the increased structural strength built into the flail type spreaders, there has been evidence of considerable wear and breakage, such as bearing wear, chain breakage and mechanical damage to the operating parts due to the nature of the solid manures. In addition, the spreaders that handle the solid type manures have the drawback of not being capable of handling or spreading liquid type manures.
In the case of prior art liquid type spreaders, the presently available prior art types incorporate a tank-like body which is suitable for use in the spreading of liquid manures.
Two types of manure spreaders for handling various types of manure which range in consistency from liquids to semi-solids are described in my aforementioned patent applications. Although my manure spreaders work exceedingly well with practically all types of manure, there are occasions when spreading certain types of manure such as chunks of feed lot manure which may produce bridging over the conveyor in the spreader. The present invention permits one to break up the manure chunks that bridge over the conveyor to insure that the whole load of manure can be quickly and easily spread.
The problem encountered with spreading chunks of solid manure is that the consistency of the manure may be so thick or dense that it can be only loaded in the spreader in large chunks or solid clumps. This is particularly true of manure that accumulates in animal feeding pens. As the animals step on the manure and bedding, they compact the manure and bedding into an almost solid mass of compacted manure which tenaciously adheres to itself in a single mat the size of the feeding pen. To load compacted manure into a spreader one uses a manure loader that literally tears off huge chunks of manure which are then dumped in the manure spreader. As such hard-packed manure is very dense and heavy, its own weight causes the manure to pack itself into the manure spreader. As the chunks of hard-packed manure fall into the spreader, the manure may compact into a self-supporting solid mass which cannot be augered or pulled out of the spreader, i.e., the manure in the proximity of the auger conveyor blades can be physically forced out of the spreader but the manure beyond the reach of the auger conveyor blades forms a self-supporting bridge over the auger conveyor blades. In this condition the auger conveyor actually forms a tunnel underneath the manure in the spreader. The present invention provides an improvement to manure spreaders to permit one to spread manure regardless of the consistency of the manure by enabling the operator to pull solid chunks or clumps of hard-packed manure into an auger conveyor where the clumps can be cut up and fed to an impeller that spreads the manure on a field.
Aside from the occasional problem of handling hard-packed or compacted manure, there are farmers who use their manure spreader in both the winter and summer months. If the manure spreader is left outside during the winter months, oftentimes even though the spreader is completely emptied, there may be sufficient manure and liquid residue on the moving parts of the spreader to permit the moving parts of the spreader to freeze to the spreader, thus rendering the spreader inoperable. If the moving parts on the spreader are frozen, one can easily break the spreader by attempting to free the spreader by unknowingly applying power to the frozen spreader. The present invention provides an improvement to the manure spreaders so that the spreaders can be used in winter time without concern that the spreader parts may freeze up.